3 weeks down

Training is going well, knocked out the 4,5, and 6 mile weekend runs, along with 2 3-mile runs during each week (plus some strength training on other days).

It's hard to gauge how well I'm doing - the run I do around my house is extremely hilly, I think one part of the run has a street sign saying 11% grade. To put it in perspective, when I run 3 miles around home, it takes around 31:30. When I run it on a treadmill, I think my last time was around 27 (or 28? I don't remember) minutes. So my pace around home seems really slow, but I know a lot of that is due to the hills. Hopefully the training will make it easier to run the relatively flat course in October.

San Jose r'n'r half marathon 2008

It's not that interesting to others, but I like keeping a record of my running training programs so that I can refer back to them the next time I train.

So with much fanfare, I announce the 2008 San Jose Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon long-run training schedule!

July 5 - 4 miles
July 12 - 5 miles
July 19 - 6 miles
July 26 - 7 miles
August 2 - 5 miles
August 9 - 7 miles
August 16 - 8 miles
August 23 - 9 miles
August 30 - 10 miles
Sept 6 - 7 miles
Sept 13 - 11 miles
Sept 20 - 12 miles
Sept 27 - TAPER
Oct 5 - RACE


I ran the 4 mile run on July 4th - 4 on the 4th! It was hard - running in my neighborhood is quite hilly, and I walked a lot. But it kicked off the program.

Amsterdam musings

I just returned from a vacation in Amsterdam and Paris. I could write about a zillion things, but I'll start by writing a bit about Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, we stayed with a friend in her apartment, so we got to learn a lot about the local culture... For example...

The Dutch drink a LOT of coffee (the claim is that they are they are only second to the Finnish in coffee drinking), but they drink small cups, not the Starbucks super-venti-flavored-sugar things. They might drink 5 cups throughout the day, and taking coffee breaks during work is a regular thing that everyone does.

Dutch toilets are weird. Each one seems to have a different flushing mechanism. Furthermore, they have a "shelf" in the toilet, where there is no water. The concept is that when you use the toilet, toilet water does not splash on to you. The result is a smelly experience.

There is a special kind of Dutch apple pie that a lot of places serve for dessert.

The Dutch birthday party is a weird ritual where everyone basically sits in a circle the whole time while having conversations. I'm not sure what the circle is about. I didn't get to experience this myself but heard about it from a few sources. They also have the cake first.

The Amsterdam streets are interesting because they are built with bicycles in mind. There are a ton of bike riders in Amsterdam. However, even though riding bikes is so common, it doesn't mean it is not scary to navigate them through traffic!

European beer has much more flavor than American beer (a generalization of course), and also contains more alcohol.

Many Dutch leave their curtains open everywhere except the bedroom. The idea is that they have nothing to hide because they are just doing "normal" things. If you close your curtains, it tends to indicate that you are hiding something.

The Dutch customer service experience is largely non-existent (another generalization of course). People working at stores rarely greet you or offer help. It is not that they are acting rudely, it is just that they don't offer help without being asked.

Tons more to say, thats just what popped into my mind right now.

What running on empty looks like

Courtesy of the wrist gps system that my wife uses when we run, here are some interesting graphs of our last two runs.

First, 2 weeks ago, a 7.5 mile run, which was one of our best runs:



A couple of interesting points:
The run started at 9:15 AM, the weather was very cool and slightly damp.
The run as a whole had an average of 6.3MPH
The drop at about 1.6 and 4 were bathroom breaks.
The drop at aout 3.5 was the turn around point.

Now look at this week's run 8.5 mile run:


Some points:
The run started at 3:33, the weather was very warm (especially compared to what I am used to at 9AM).
The drop at 3 was a bathroom break.
The drop at 4 was a turn around point
The drop at 5 was a long re-fill the water bottle break.
The drop at 7 was me completely running out of energy.
I managed to run another half mile between 7.5 and 8, but that was it.

Anyway, it was pretty interesting how different it was to run when it was warm, and also the difference in running late in the day versus first thing in the morning. I made the mistake of not eating a good lunch before my afternoon run, and I ran out of energy. I think the heat made me need a lot more water intake than I'm used to also...

Behavioral pricing

I can't be 100% sure, but I believe I was almost a victim of an internet site adjusting their prices based on my web surfing behavior...

I had been using one of the major travel sites to book an air and hotel combo the other day. I looked at the site several times to check prices, and once even got to the purchase screen, before I decided to back out and check one other site to see if there was a cheaper deal.

Finally I decided there wasn't a better deal out there, went back, and looked up my flight and hotel combo again, only to find that it was now $40 more expensive. Now I have seen airline tickets change prices over a period of days, but this price had changed in 10 minutes, at 8PM at night. I checked the individual prices at the airline and the hotel websites - those prices had not changed. So the price change came from this particular site alone.

So I went to a different site to buy the package at a slightly higher price than the original price, but cheaper than the new $40 more price. But then I decided to just check again in the morning to see if the price went back down.

An hour or so later, I remembered reading an article awhile back about how travel sites might offer different users different prices. For example, maybe they offer cheaper prices to people without accounts in order to get them to register the first time, or maybe they offer cheaper prices to frequent customers to keep them loyal.

On a hunch, I deleted all my browser cookies. I went back to the site, and suddenly my trip was the original price I had seen many times before.

So one of two things happened: 1) There was a random fluctuation in pricing over about a 2 hour period. or 2) For some reason, some computer algorithm thought that I deserved a $40 price raise in the package I was trying to buy.

I'll never know for sure what happened. But it is pretty interesting to think about the implications of changing prices on interenet stores. At your brick and mortar store, it wouldn't work to offer different prices to different customers - they would all see eachother's prices and complain. But on internet sites, where everyone could possibly see something different, who knows what is really going on...

Gun control

So I'm probably the 87 millionth person to bring up gun control this week.

I thought CNN.com did a respectable job of presenting the two sides of the issue with two columns: this column is in support of getting rid of all guns (except for certain hunting or sports clubs), and this column is in favor of mandating that everyone carry a gun (written by Ted Nugent, which, despite having practically opposite ideals than I do, I always enjoy hearing or reading his thoughts because his passion for his beliefs is quite amazing.)

The issue of gun control is really complicated, but some things always bug me about the debate. First of all, I will never buy an argument that begins with "the founding fathers intended..." The Constiution originally allowed slavery and denied women the right to vote. Constiutional amendments have been passed to outlaw alcohol, and then repeal that prohibition. The fact is, things change over time. Our government is supposed to be the "great experiment." If we don't learn from our mistakes, the experiment is bound to fail. I believe this to be the case for all parts of our Constitution, not just certain amendments. The Constitution is there to prevent spur-of-the-moment governmental changes that would derail our society. It is not there to prevent us from developing a better government as time goes on.

Secondly, I don't buy the argument that no one will shoot anyone if everyone carries a gun. I am willing to listen to the argument that mass killings would *probably* become practically extinct if everyone carried a gun, because as soon as someone started going ballistic they would be stopped. But I do believe that random, heat-of-the-moment crimes would increase. People get mad and do irrational things. People get drunk and do stupid things. People don't pay attention and cause accidents. Increasing the chance that a simple accident could turn into a fatal one is not a good idea.

But beyond that, things get really confusing. The one thing that I keep coming back to is that in my imaginary, ideal world, guns don't exist. But in the real world, guns do exist, and somewhere, someone will have them no matter what governmental laws are in place.

Sometimes I wonder how Supreme Court Justices are able to handle the weight of their positions.

juice fast

As part of the cleanse I'm doing, I did a 24-hour juice fast from Friday night 9PM til Saturday night 9PM.

A juice fast means that you are only supposed to intake fresh juices.

Saturday morning we made a lemon-lime-grapefruit juice. Then saturday afternoon we made a "green lemonade" with lemon, lime, apple, celery, carrots, ginger, and maybe something else I'm forgetting (we usually put in kale but were out).

We cheated a bit and had a "raw soup", which was a bunch of vegetables and vegetable broth thrown into a blender, and was actually quite tasty. We also drank a ton of tea throughout the day (augmented with flax seed and grapefruit seed extract).

At about 8:30PM I had half a banana, and then at 9PM dove into friday night's leftovers.

It was a difficult experience - there were times when I was very hungry, but those would usually pass. I don't think I've ever gone that long without eating before, so it was nice to know that the next time I am an hour late taking my lunch I won't actually die of starvation.

One thing I realized during this was that in the face of starvation, I would not hold on to being a vegetarian.

Another thing I often thought about was how certain religious groups do a fast every week. I wonder how that frequent fasting affects their health.